So, my upstairs neighbor (a poet) loaned me a couple of books of poetry over the holidays. Due to my Cybils duties, I haven’t been able to open them until recently. One of them is by Galway Kinnell, and I’m loving it. So I thought I’d pay my neighbor’s good deed forward, and share him with you all.

Goodbye, lady in Bangor, who sent me
snapshots of yourself, after definitely hinting
you were beautiful; goodbye,
Miami Beach urologist, who enclosed plain
brown envelopes for the return of your very
“Clinical Sonnets”; goodbye, manufacturer
of brassieres on the Coast, whose eclogues
give the fullest treatment in literature yet
to the sagging breast motif; goodbye, you in San Quentin,
who wrote, “Being German my hero is Hitler,”
instead of “Sincerely yours,” at the end of long,
neat-scripted letters extolling the Pre-Raphaelites:

I swear to you, it was just my way
of cheering myself up, as I licked
the stamped, self-addressed envelopes,
the game I had of trying to guess
which one of you, this time,
had poisoned his glue.

7 comments to “Poetry Friday: Galway Kinnell”

A strangely beautiful poem. Correspondence schools — the kind with stamps and envelopes — are getting to be a thing of the past; I imagine that someday the ritual of licking stamps will even be obsolete. Hm.

TadMack, you just made me nostalgic for something that I don’t even enjoy.

And yes, Kelly, definitely a hint of snark. It reminds me of how this past week has been for me, temping at Cornell, filing all the hopeful applicants’ transcripts and recommendation letters alongside carefully typed excuses for why their GRE scores aren’t as good as they should be.

I had so much reading this poem. I had found it once before, when I was snooping around poetry sites for info on his poem “Oatmeal.” Then I found this great article on Galway Kinnell’s birthday party. The guest list is incredible!